


Conversations in a Flying Mortar

by QueenOfPlotTwists



Series: 31 Day Yu-Gi-October Halloween Challenge [3]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Drabble Prose, Halloween Challenge, October Prompt Challenge, Russian & Slavic Folklore, Russian Mythology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:08:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26800393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenOfPlotTwists/pseuds/QueenOfPlotTwists
Summary: There is no greater Legend than the Baba Yaga, a witch and woman who defies all and is commanded by none--and soon she will teach her grandson this power. But everyone appreciates Baba Yaga’s place in the world—their place, she tells Yami--whom must decide for himself which of the stories are true and which--if any--are exaggerations.Part 2: Prequel to the Walking House or How Yami came to become the new Infamous Baba YagaDay Three of 31 Day Y-G-October/Halloween Prompt ChallengePrompt 27: Legend
Series: 31 Day Yu-Gi-October Halloween Challenge [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947991
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	Conversations in a Flying Mortar

**Author's Note:**

> So...another one that was not meant to be a stand alone but while I was exploring the prompt list I found Legend and well, what greater Legend is there than Baba Yaga?  
> So much fun to research! 
> 
> Day Three of 31 Day Y-G-October/Halloween Prompt Challenge
> 
> Prompt 27: Legend

The mortar makes its way through the woods and wild with surprisingly little in the ways of chaos of damage. Baba Yaga knows her paths: knows where the trees are lowest and where best to hide, where to ascend into the sky and where her strange locomotive will not be seen. And the silken tassels of the mortar’s attached broom sweep behind her, like a fluttering golden tale, she ensures that no one can follow their trail to, what Yami suspects, is her _dacha_ cottage hidden vast and deep in the wild forests with its gate of bones topped with glowing-eyed skulls surrounding a courtyard where a vain birch tree swaps at intruders and a fierce wolfhound guards the door and a fox-eyes cat prowls the inside, and—if the myths and stories are correct—dances wildly on chicken’s feet while its mistress is away.

Yami expects all these stories to be true—it is hard not to when he’s currently standing in a boulder-sized mortar levitating itself high above the trees and the woman propelling itself under her keen, sure-handed steering is none other than the Baba Yaga. The Bone Mother. His Grandmother. He understand well the purpose of the broom: its magic sweeping away all trace of their path in a cloud of magic and ashes and dust, why she ordered him to keep the handle.

Not everyone appreciates Baba Yaga’s place in the world—their place, she tells him.

Baba Yaga is no ordinary woman, though perhaps she was once, before the Calling (though she speaks no more of this and continues before he can ask her). She will bow to the wishes of no man, though she may yet chose one for herself. She will bear no more children, though she will clearly take one in. She is both independent and self-sufficient, adrift from the world and its demands. The laws of man are not hers, but he obeys the rules of nature faithfully, for like nature herself she is both kind and cruel, both savage and merciful, but her mercy is savage and her cruelty is also kind. She is both woman and witch. Both mother and murdered, Take and Giver. She is a woman unbound and who cannot be bound: she is a conundrum and a contradiction.

The world, in ceasing to recognize her value, has granted her a freedom unknown to maids and mothers: only a crone may stand alone. Only a widower can hold the suffering of the world within her breast and know the strength and power of its memory and use that to heal. And she heals when she can: delivering the unborn, caring for the sick and exorcising curses and demons, and when she cannot, she slows the hearts of the dying, taking their weak hands and ushering the along the path from this world and to the next easing suffering and tempering fear. Mourners put such deaths down to malice on the witch’s part: a crone hungry to take a life, eager for the juices of the living to fuel her long, deathless existence. In truth they waited too long and in grief need someone else to blame for their own inaction, be it pride or fear or reverence. Often times they wait too long and she comes too late. She is a strange, surrealist creature: different, peculiar, eldritch.

Those who summon her do so only in desperation, a last hope, too fearful to approach her willingly, otherwise and even then, it is with a red rag tied to a fence post or the gate. Offerings are left as well, a plate of food on the back step, a way to avoid direct contact disguised as a gift and a gratitude. Even when she succeeds in her healing, there is still fear—the gratitude is a strange ghost, a haunting unease, nipping at the skin like vengeful frozen spirits, an idea, however unreasonable, that the price of her surface is too high.

There are other stories as well about her—rumors and stories that vary from comical to terrifying. That she has iron teeth and can eat as much as ten full grown men. That she sleeps on top of the stove and when she sleeps her long nose touches the ceiling. That she transforms into a snake, that she has three heads, that she eats children, that she spits curses.

There is a pain in her heart as she explains this to him. Yami can hear it: the bitter ache in her voice, a sadness, a pain that tells him she is still a little bit human, less than mortal but more than stone. He tells her that, and he can tell by the small line of her smile that the observation comforts her.

She will leave it up to him to see which ones and true and which ones are exaggerations.

**Author's Note:**

> So bit of background there but I think it worked to establish a bit of a bonding moment between these two...I will also say that another reason my original next part is taking so long is because I got so inspired by this idea that I am going to play around with this plot and ultimately turn this series into an original novel titled the Walking House! (Yugi's arrival with be the epilogue ;) I may write more for it in this challenge or I may not. I already have tons of ideas I'm writing down as we speak!  
> Mwahahahahahahaha!!! Fear my imagination!!!


End file.
